Many things can change in 16 years.
In 2009, a drug conviction earned Coss Marte a seven-year prison sentence. This year, Marte hopes to raise up to $12 million by selling hashish legally.
Marte, 39, is the founder and CEO of Conbud, one of the first companies fully licensed to sell recreational hashish in Manhattan and the first in the Decrease East Aspect of the city. After opening its doors for the first time in October 2023Conbud added a second location in the Bronx last April.
Marte’s business currently generates about $800,000 in sales per month, including nearly $100,000 in profits, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Marte projects a final figure of about $7 million by 2024, he says.
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After being granted early release from prison in 2013, Marte launched a health business called Conbody, based on his exercise regimen behind bars. Then, in 2021, New York legalized the sale of recreational hashish and expunged all previous convictions for marijuana-related crimes.
A year later, the state announced that business owners with prior marijuana convictions would be eligible to receive the first licenses to sell recreational marijuana. Given his experience managing Conbody and the requirements set by the state for retail licensees, Marte saw a golden business opportunity, he says.
“I was following this law, and what they demanded was two years of clearly profitable business and a conviction on his record,” says Marte. “Now, how many people have that to qualify for a hashish license? “Not many.”
From prison training to multiple businesses
Marte grew up in the Decrease East Side, surrounded by an illicit drug trade that caught him at age 13, after seeing other teenagers making money that way, he says.
“When I was a kid, people asked me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And I said: ‘I want to be rich,’” says Marte. “The first opportunity was through the world of drugs. So I started dealing marijuana.”
In prison, doctors told Marte that he was overweight and had dangerously high cholesterol. He began working out intensely, using bodyweight exercises he could do in his cell. Upon release from prison, Marte connected with Defy Ventures, a nonprofit program that provides business training and business mentoring to formerly incarcerated individuals.
Coss Marte, founder and majority owner of Conbud, one of the first legal recreational hashish dispensaries in New York City.
Source: CNBC Do It
With a $10,000 grant from Defy, Marte launched Conbody, which now generates about $1 million in annual revenue, he says, in 2014.
Eight years later, Marte paid $2,000 to apply for a retail hashish license. He invested about $50,000 of his own savings into Conbud, mostly from Conbody and paid speaking engagements, he says, and raised nearly $1.2 million in additional seed funding from friends and family, who are now co-owners of the business.
Marte owns 51%, as New York requires that the “justice struck” licensee preserve majority ownership.
Conbud’s initial funds paid for a $400,000 security deposit on the Decrease East Aspect retail store, construction costs, payroll and inventory, Marte says. The company opened its doors in October 2023 and generated approximately $250,000 in revenue per month, until authorities Shut down hundreds of unlicensed operators selling cannabis illegally last year.
Looking at growth in a highly competitive market
This chart breaks down the monthly expenses of Mars’ business.
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Even the easy cost of doing business (particularly rental and labor costs) is high, leaving Mars with a relatively small 13% profit margin, he says. If hashish were legalized at the federal level, Marte would be able to access federal tax deductions for payroll and other business expenses, and expanded banking options with lower rates.
“Then, that 13% will (eventually) grow to 25% profit margins,” he says.
Both Conbud and Conbody almost exclusively hire workers who have been “justice-affected,” meaning they or a family member was incarcerated for a previous drug conviction, Marte says. Altogether, it employs 72 people who meet that criteria.
Marte himself walked out of prison with $40 and a bus ticket, only to “end up on my mom’s couch” while trying to figure out how he could make a living with a drug conviction on his record, he says. Without his second chance, he probably never would have found himself in this position, he notes.
“It is a very, very large community that is growing with us,” says Marte. “I feel blessed, man.”
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